(Word Count: 2,600)
"YOSH! Good luck with your team, Sakai!" Guy and Dai said, before we split ways early the next day towards different training grounds. I waved them goodbye and started a light jog. It was still dark out, so all of the streets were empty. I didn't mind though. I had long since gotten used to these early mornings, and had actually come to enjoy these quiet runs.
I was the first to arrive at our team's training ground, since the Might household woke up at a time anyone else would describe as an "unholy hour." Not wanting to waste this time, I quickly went to work setting up a hidden barrier around the grounds, designed to tell me the approximate location of any large chakra sources.
An hour later, I was still alone, so I set up some simple traps around some key locations that had a good vantage point for some of the more high-trafficked areas with some explosive seals I had made. They were set to only trigger when someone with more than Jonin level chakra got close, so there wasn't much risk to my teammates.
I was setting up my last trap when I felt someone cross the barrier. It was far too large to be Kurenai or Shizune, so I immediately hid.
Tsunade was here.
She wasn't going to the field, instead she hid at a vantage point. A moment later, she reappeared in the field, right as an explosion went off. I sighed. I hadn't expected Tsunade to be the type of teacher to silently observe her students as they arrived. She was supposed to be far more direct than that, wasn't she?
Now she knows I'm here, and that I set up traps. With a brief glance around, she quickly zeroed in on my location.
"Sakai!" Well, no use in hiding now. I quickly flickered down next to her, and gave a shameless wave. She looked mildly impressed, but she was also annoyed based on the slight tick in her eyebrow.
"Hey, Tsunade, how's it going?"
"What are you doing here so early?" The sky was just beginning to lighten up, as the sun was approaching.
"Well, I live with the Mights. They're early risers," I said.
"And you're not?"
"I coped with a lot of caffeine and in-class naps, but I've gotten used to it by now," I shrugged.
"So while you waited, you thought it was a good idea to boobytrap the entire forest? What about your teammates? They wouldn't have been able to escape in time, that would have killed them!" Tsunade yelled.
"Don't worry, I've set the trigger to be a chakra presence larger than any jonin I know. So it will only go off when you're close enough for them to sense," I explained.
"And how many traps did you set up?" Tsunade asked.
"We're about to fight, why would I tell you?" I said cheekily.
"Well, I suppose you've been rather smart about it. Just make sure to take them down afterwards."
"Of course."
"Well, if you know that I'm here, it won't make any sense to try and observe you now. In that case, why don't we start our match right now?"
And before I could respond, Tsunade was already launching herself at me, ready to punch the daylights out of me. She was obviously holding back, she was about the level of a chunin, so I could actually dodge it in time. She didn't punch the ground or anything that destructive right now, this was just pure taijutsu.
"Is this really necessary?" I asked, throwing a kick towards her stomach. She went to catch it, so, having learned the hard way that it would result in being thrown around, I made that into a feint and quickly readjusted the angle to kick her head. Of course, she still caught it, and I was still thrown at the nearest tree.
Midair, I spun around to land on my feet. I stuck there, standing horizontally on the trunk. I continued my thought. "I mean, you already know by now my skill level in each field. When you said we were going to fight, I thought you meant to fight us as a team to test our teamwork or something."
"It's been, what, 2 weeks since we last fought? I want to see how much you've improved since then!" Tsunade yelled, launching herself at me again. I substituted myself with a branch that was on the ground behind the neighboring tree, hiding myself from Tsunade's view. This time, Tsunade's fist landed on the tree I was just on, and the entire trunk exploded, sending shrapnel everywhere. The tree toppled over with a loud crash, and I used that time to flicker away, setting traps along my escape route.
"You're not getting away so easily!" Tsunade gave chase.
"Oh come on! Any normal Chunin wouldn't have noticed me leaving! Stick to one level!" I griped, and used a Shadow Clone to split up. Unfortunately for me, she knew it too, and now both me and my clone had a Tsunade following us. I didn't know which of us had the real Tsunade following. Either way, she just bulldozed through all of my traps I had quickly set up, batting aside the flung kunai.
Another unfortunate thing was that now that she had split her chakra into two, I doubted she had enough chakra to trigger the powerful explosive tags I had made to counter her. She still had more chakra than any Jonin, but I had intentionally made the requirements to be high enough to only trigger against a Sannin.
I had literally told her what triggered them. As I watched her run past one of them without it triggering, I couldn't help but sigh. "Alright, that one's on me."
"Yeah, you really need to keep your mouth shut about information like that," she agreed. She quickly caught up to me, and I swiped at her with a chakra scalpel. She blocked it by grabbing my forearm. Before she could chuck me again, the chakra around my hand deformed and shot out into a bunch of earth-attuned chakra strings. Earth-attuned strings were much more resilient than normal chakra strings. The downside was that they were a bit too stiff, so it wasn't good to use for puppetry, but that wasn't a downside I was worried about.
The strings quickly surrounded her, and quickly snapped into place, binding her arms to her side. I didn't celebrate, it was too easy. Sure enough, a split second later, she burst into smoke and I was left with a tied up stone. Substitution.
In the distance a large explosion sounded. Memories of my clone came back to me. He had encountered the same issue I had of my tags not triggering. So he triggered one manually in a kamikaze attack.
What a guy. Yes, shadow clones act exactly as you would, but there was something about knowing you're a temporary clone that made them act far less reserved than the original ever would in certain situations.
That attack also took out Tsunade's shadow clone in the explosion, and the chakra of our clones came back to us. This gave the real Tsunade enough chakra to trigger the tags again. I body flickered back to the center clearing just as the tree next to us exploded.
Tsunade appeared next to me an instant later, unscathed. "Heh, that was great! You almost got me there."
"I wish I could claim that was on purpose, but it was just good timing," I said.
"Shame," and she smashed the ground around us with a stomp.
An hour of being tossed around later, I finally felt two presences cross my boundary I had set up. "Finally!" I groaned, and I flopped onto the ground. My chakra was spent, and I was exhausted. Tsunade stood over me, amused.
"What, you're giving up? You haven't even landed a hit!"
I glared at her. "Of course I haven't! And I'm not giving up. My chakra's exhausted and Kurenai and Shizune arrived. It's their turn to get tossed around now."
"It's called training."
Soon, the two girls came into view. They looked around nervously at the torn up training grounds. "What happened here?" Shizune asked.
"We both got here a little early, so we had sparred to pass the time," Tsunade said casually. "Now that the two of you are here, it's your turn. Shizune, you're up first so show me what you've got."
Unlike how she treated me, Tsunade waited for Shizune to make the first move. I grabbed Kurenai's hand and led her off to the side. I ignored her blushing. "Make sure you watch them carefully. You can get a chance to glean some of Tsunade's tricks."
I pulled out a small chakra pill and water bottle from my pack. The chakra pill was one of my own creations. It was a lesser version of the soldier pills, and only aided in the natural recovery of chakra. It didn't force chakra generation so a ninja could fight for days like the soldier pill. However, with the pill, I wouldn't be exhausted for the rest of the day. It wasn't a large ball like Sakura had made her pills be, but it was the size of normal modern pills, and even coated in a thin glaze so the consumer didn't have to taste the mud-like formula.
As soon as I passed the medical exam and became a licensed doctor, I submitted these pills to the hospital for testing, to make sure that they were legit and wouldn't poison people. Give it a few months, maybe a year or two, and they'll be licensed to sell on the market. These pills alone could make me a millionaire with how useful they would be to ninja outside of the battlefield.
"GO!" Tsunade said.
Shizune, instead of attacking directly, ran and hid in the surrounding forest. Smart to not try fighting her directly, but it was kind of pointless unless she could get Tsunade to follow her into the forest. Tsunade decided to play along, and strolled after her.
So Kurenai and I were left by ourselves for the moment. She was blushing and looked like she was working up the courage to say something.
"S-Sakai, um, I was thinking, you know, since we're teammates and all, that maybe we can get lunch after this? To get to know each other better. As teammates!" She stuttered.
"Hmm, we'll have to check to see if Shizune's available, but yeah, that sounds like a great idea," I replied.
A few moments later, Tsunade came walking back to the clearing carrying an unconscious Shizune over a shoulder. She must have been caught in some sort of genjutsu. She laid her down next to me. "Alright, Kurenai, your turn!" All the blood from Kurenai's previously blushing face drained out.
"H-h-hai!" She jumped up to her feet.
"Good luck, Kurenai!" I cheered. She gave a weak smile back before focusing on Tsunade, pulling out a kunai. Her main strength was with genjutsu, and I knew that she's already learned several from her father. The question was, would she be able to trap Tsunade in one? Not very likely, considering Tsunade's incredible chakra control. She'll have to play it extremely subtle with it.
"GO!"
Just like Shizune, Kurenai also chose to run into the forest around us. I had enough chakra recovered that I was able to send out a Shadow Clone, though it'll only last a few minutes. It followed after them from a distance to silently watch.
The way that genjutsu worked was that the caster needed to use one of the five senses to insert some of their chakra into the target, which would then work to manipulate their senses. Whatever they used as a trigger needed to be both noticeable enough that it captures the target's attention, and subtle enough in the environment that the target doesn't realize it's out of place. It's why the castor's eyes are usually such good triggers.
Most of Kurenai's genjutsus were visual-based, requiring something seen to be the trigger. Kurenai used the surrounding forest to try and distract Tsunade, experimenting with several different ways to trigger a genjutsu. Sometimes using her own red eyes, sometimes using a falling leaf, or a beam of light that was shining through the canopy. Nothing seemed to really work until, when she had briefly broken away from Tsunade, Kurenai set some traps behind her. She used the explosive tag itself as the trigger and, because Tsunade was briefly distracted with the explosion, she was finally successful.
Of course, it didn't hold her for very long, but the very fact that it had worked at all was incredible. It just goes to show how talented Kurenai was in her field. Kurenai forgot about her match and cheered, "It actually worked!"
Tsunade leveled a glare at her, and she gulped and ran away.
With that, my Shadow Clone chose to dispel itself, and I received all of that information.
As that was all happening, I was back in the clearing waking Shizune. I used a bit of my chakra to break her out of her genjutsu-induced sleep. She woke up with a groan. "What happened?"
"Good morning, sleepy head. You got knocked out by Tsunade."
"She's too strong, I couldn't even land a single hit on her," Shizune said sadly.
"Don't worry about it too much, Shizune, I couldn't do anything to her either. She's not a Sannin for nothing. We'll just have to learn as much as we can and get stronger together. Give it a few years, and we'll be smashing apart the entire landscape and healing armies, just like Tsunade."
She smiled. "Yeah! Thanks, Sakai. Though, Sakai, you've been Tsunade's apprentice for years already. Do you know how to smash the ground like she does? I've seen you do a lot of medical stuff, but I've never seen you do that before."
I shook my head. "No, not yet. So far, I've been working on the common Iryojutsu that every Iryo-Nin should know. I haven't gotten to learning Tsunade's personal skills yet. Though, she did say that she'll start teaching me those in the coming weeks."
"Anyway," I changed the subject, "Kurenai and I were talking about having lunch as a team. Are you free after this? Who knows, if we're lucky, we might get Tsunade to pay for it."
"That sounds fun! Let's do it!"
A few minutes later, my shadow clone popped and I got the memories of Kurenai's fight. My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I wasn't expecting her to actually succeed with a genjutsu. Shizune noticed, and asked, "what?"
"Kurenai was actually able to get a genjutsu through. Only for a moment, but still."
A moment later, Tsunade came back into the clearing with an unconscious Kurenai over her shoulder, looking annoyed. I grinned widely at her. "Shut it, Sakai, I don't want to hear it."
"Looks like one of us actually managed to land a blow on you," I teased.
"It wasn't a hit! It was a genjutsu, and it was barely for a second!" She defended herself.
"Really? Then why do you seem so annoyed? It sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself!"
Tsunade set Kurenai down and cracked her knuckles. "It looks like you're ready for round two!"
"Hey wait a minute, I'm still recovering!" I paled, shooting to my feet and backing away.
"It sounds to me like you're just making excuses!" She charged.